


Like Mercury from Cinnabar (a history of pigment)

by Sevynlira



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Art History, Daydreaming, M/M, Painting, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27528880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevynlira/pseuds/Sevynlira
Summary: Aziraphale muses over the deadly history of color and art and what it means to be in love with something beautiful that will kill you
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Like Mercury from Cinnabar (a history of pigment)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this one as a personal thanks to the artist, Wisesnail. We are so fortunate to have the gift of art and I want this work to show my eternal gratitude for the patience and beauty of that work

There hadn’t been a word to describe it, the color of the demon's hair. There was only the fluttering flush of heat he felt in his face that attempted a shy reflection. Not until humans began to wrap their thoughts around ideas like blood and breathless. The sky would sometimes hint that it missed him. Begging with blood red for Crowley to come back and handle the stars and stretch his wings there. A screaming plea just before sinking into blackness again. The turning planet dragging that bloody sun away for another day.

There in a hidden cave they unearthed it, this vermillion stone. This deadly thing and they crushed it until it powdered and gave and bled for them across clay and stone. 

At the beginning it had been like that. Holding a sword does that to us all. Even an angel. A humiliating rush of bright energy that he wouldn’t dare. Never show to anyone. The ache to let go of the tension. Finally. The waiting. The interminable dragging steps of boredom. A guard doesn’t get that release. The sentinel stands with some itch in his spine that he cannot scratch. Listening to the wind and the pleasant murmur of water and peace. Too much peace. It was maddening. 

And so the adversary had come. A great fat serpent to tempt and tease and ruin the entire bloody business and Aziraphale could almost weep with relief. Finally. Finally something different. Something new. And by the Lord, he wanted to lunge right at him and grip his fingers in the shining skein of his blood-bright hair and yank. Hard. He wanted to pin the squirming long length of him down, tight against the stone and crush him. The victorious legions of heaven with that wily adversary trapped and helpless there. 

He felt that surely the impulse must be shining as bright as sunlight glinting from those strands. He must be glowing with it. 

Or perhaps not. Wrestling with temptation is a private business and he is an angel. Maybe he had snuck it past those clever eyes. It’s not like he could ask. Not now. It’s been too long.

He won’t ever forget the first time he had seen a wall daubed with that color. That red. Like blood. Like a blush. Like the sunset. His breath had stuck somewhere around his ribs and his fingertips dug hot crescents into his palms. He wanted to touch it. 

So he had made inquiries. Cinnabar. The name for that stone. Quarried from the earth and crushed and ground to powder. 

He had endured a great long journey behind stinking camels and endured the grimy funk of caravan life to follow the merchant chain all the way to the supplier of such bounty. 

He shouldn’t have done that. It haunts him still. The stinking ranks of slaves with emaciated, slack, drooling monotony, dragging the red stone from the earth. Why does hell exist? One can find all of its components here in the heartless maw of the earth where they dig red fire from the ground and boil its submissive blood into quicksilver. The hapless skeletal children gnawing fruitlessly at their peeling fingernails and stumbling down into the steaming chambers where liquid mercury is made. 

Who can we credit for this one? Heaven? The creative impulse to draw, to paint, to sculpt. Happily he had taken credit. Sure. This must be a reflection of god herself. To elevate. To duplicate the glory of all they see around them. 

Perhaps it is hellish. Sinful. His love of it. The splash of vermillion and heat of blood beneath the skin. It is so wrong. To see a thing of beauty and want to capture it. Pin it down. Smear it across a canvass. He cannot stand in a museum before the paintings of the masters and not see the screaming jolt of vermillion and know it all. What it means to have red there. What it cost humanity to find red and catch it and press it into paint.

He sat to drink in Rome one day and they talked of Mercury. They said it was the essence of all metal. The very meaning of what it is to be metal. That slick shining spill of bright silver. 

They were wrong. Before it was that clever squirming droplet, it had been married to the red rocks beneath the earth. It had been a part of them. Something terrible had happened. Something awful that burned and hurt and slaughtered thousands and the pretty silver was ripped out of its bloody embrace to flow free. 

It was a sham. Not firm or sharp as metal should be. Something weak and terrified that runs away from the press of fingers or the promise of heat. Weak. So changeable and shining with empty promises and carrying the silver scythe of death. 

How well he knows the shivering heart of mercury. The fluttering surety that maybe his fulminate heart can be strapped to a bomb and rip the entire world apart. Or maybe he can sit in a house of glass and talk about heat but never touch it. Another battery for the apocalypse. A useful bit of old fashioned deadly history. 

Humans have moved past their need for mercury. His stodgy little store and his tatty pale suit are relics. The mad hatters have hung up their tools. The mercury mines have closed. 

And Cinnabar, that bloody art, it too has faded into the entropy of all things. 

Perhaps they can go back. To how it was in the beginning. When Cinnabar held Mercury in its red red heart. When they were safe. When they didn’t have to drive the world mad and hold swords and guard gates and be snakes and shine with pretty lies. 

Maybe they can hold each other in the dark. Pressed so close that they are one.

Like Mercury in Cinnabar.


End file.
